Would-be presidential candidates, particularly Republicans, have been investing plenty of attention in Iowa and New Hampshire, but if you want to know who’s definitely weighing a campaign in ’08, take a look at South Carolina, home of the nation’s first southern primary.
Rudy Giuliani, for example, has scheduled two South Carolina speaking engagements in the next couple of months. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney not only will be in Spartanburg in February for a GOP dinner, but has also contributed money to several Republican organizations in the state. The hints are hardly subtle.
But then there’s John McCain, who’s been relatively coy about his intentions when speaking to reporters, but appears to be laying at least some groundwork in states like South Carolina.
McCain’s representatives also recently visited the state. They met with House Majority Leader Jim Merrill, R-Charleston, and political consultant Richard Quinn. Both played leading roles in McCain’s losing primary contest against George W. Bush in 2000, one of the nastiest ever witnessed in South Carolina.
“We had a good discussion,” Merrill said of his meeting with Lanny Wiles, McCain’s advance man in 2000. “They are definitely exploring another race.”
The question then becomes what McCain’s team will find through the course of this exploration. Conservative Republicans in this conservative Republican state are as hesitant about McCain now as they were five years ago.
[T]hose who had their knives out for McCain in 2000 will be back.
“If he enters the race, he’ll bring more baggage into South Carolina than Delta Airlines,” said Heath Thompson, Bush’s state campaign director in 2000.
Consultant Warren Tompkins, who has close ties to the Bush White House, says he could back anybody but McCain. “He’s always first out of the box to criticize the president.”
It’s the hurdle that McCain’s possible campaign may not be able to clear. There’s an important difference between being a popular national figure and being popular with Republican primary voters — the “maverick” traits that boost his appeal with swing voters and the media make him a disloyal, unreliable, and overly-moderate politician with the party faithful.
Republicans don’t like mavericks; they like true-believers.